A prime example of the revisionist Westerns of the early 1970s that followed in the wake of The Wild Bunch, this 1972 oater effectively deglamorizes the dusty, brutal existence of a cattle drive, in which men drank and fought to escape the tedium, and survival often hinged on how quickly—and willingly—one could pull a trigger. Gary Grimes stars as an idealistic teenager, hired as a cook's helper, whose romantic notions of cowboy life are quickly shattered by the rigors and reality of life on the trail. Eric Bercovici and Gregory Prentiss's original screenplay earned a Writers Guild nomination.